A New Beginning

After a fantastic and amazing time in Amritsar and McLeod Ganj, I am back in Delhi and Ulco is en route to St. Petersburg after a few days stop over in Dubai. I myself, am facing what is one of the most exciting times in my life and have that feeling, and the knowledge, that I am on the edge of something big, HUGE, happening.

It all started back in June. After months and months of not working and going through an almost paralyzing depression, I decided to leave India. I had spent months applying for jobs, registering on sites and nothing at all came of it. When the list of the top ten worst places in the world to live was released, I was desperate enough to apply in all those countries. Still, nothing happened. Not even a single response. I hadn’t looked for a job since I was in my early twenties. They came looking for me, and suddenly I could not even get a simple reply. There was nothing here for me anymore and there was no light on the horizon. Manuel was going back to Scotland and I could not watch my bank account go down anymore. In all honestly, there wasn’t any lower it could get. I decided I was going to go back to the US and since the recession was in full swing, take whatever job I could get and go back to school taking classes in creative writing, photography or anything else along those lines.

Then I got a call from the ad agency that had brought me to India in the fist place asking if I would be willing to go back to work for three months. I didn’t want to do it, but it was a job and a job meant cash so I said yes. In less than a week I found a place to live, moved and started my temporary job. Two weeks into my job, the client I was working on decided they didn’t want any temporary people, or more precisely, foreigners, on their account as of the first of August. Three months of salary quickly became one month and all I had done was bought myself another month or so in India only to find myself once again unemployed and with an uncertain future.

I decided to take a bit of advantage of the situation. I had been in Thailand in February and had found it amazingly inexpensive, more so than India, even. I decided I would take a few months and travel around Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, writing and taking pictures for some magazines. I contacted a few people I knew at some publications and they liked the idea. Little did I know, but I had put into motion something larger than I could have imagined at the time. My little idea of traveling and writing for some magazines has become a twice weekly television program. We are on the verge of getting endorsed by a highly reputable tourism focused company in India that will open all the other necessary doors for us. The first two episodes are scripted out and it is all moving forward. Hopefully we will start shooting in October. I can’t go into details yet, but it is an original concept that has not yet been done before. I will keep you all posted.

In addition to that, I was asked to audition for a movie and have heard it went really well. I haven’t heard back an official “yes” yet, but as of now it is looking very positive in my favor. It is a pretty big role in a film set to shoot in November. Suddenly it seems that everything I wanted so many years ago and never really stopped dreaming about is all knocking on my door. I have a hard time comprehending it might actually be here, my dreams, right here in front of me. If I think about it too much, I just want to laugh and cry and scream and shout. There are still a few hurdles to jump, but so far, not one person has been negative and has only added to the idea. I now find myself having to turn down ideas as I am only one hosting the show and there is only so much I can do.

On a side note, I am sitting at “The Living Room”, a restaurant I practically live at, typing all of this out. I was just interrupted by someone asking if I would be interested in being in a film shooting in a week. I said yes and now photos are on their way for someone to decide if I have the right hairline, cheekbones, coloring and look.

What I find interesting about all of this, is that whenever I try to do something lately that is not in the creative area, it goes all wrong. There are no positions, no funding, or an endless number of things get in the way. As soon as I put my attention into writing or acting, things work out effortlessly, they come to me, people cross my path and doors open. So I have taken it as a sign that this new shift in career is exactly where I need to be heading.

The other day, I was thinking about all of this and feeling a bit too old to be making a career change at my age, and one into film and television at that. But I was reading an old column of Dominick Dunne, one of my favorite writers at Vanity Fair and whose column was one of the first pieces I read each month. I have been reading him for as long as I can remember and he was one of the inspirations for me to start writing, but for some reason, I have never read one of his books. (Not to self: Get Dominick Dunne book) I was very surprised to learn that he didn’t start writing until he was 50. Not only that, he didn’t write for Vanity Fair until he was 59. 59! My fears of age were immediately and permanently tossed aside.

So it looks like the months ahead are going to be a rollercoaster of a time in the best possible way…